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The Brighton Magazine

Selected Brighton Magazine Article

Wednesday 06 June 2018

Fly In A Virtual Reality World & Much More During Attenborough Centre For The Creative Arts Autumn Season

The UK's first ever interactive film event, an opportunity to walk a mile in someone else's shoes or to fly in a virtual reality world, and a marathon performance of remembered dances are all part of a packed autumn season at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Brighton.

The UK premiere of Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang's Chalkroom (Thursday 4 – Thursday 25 October) will be a focal point in the Brighton Digital Festival events at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts.

In this celebrated VR work, the viewer can attempt to take flight in a virtual world, whilst moving around an enormous structure made of words, drawings and stories. Chalkroom has previously been shown at MASS MoCa (USA), the Venice International Film Festival and Taipei Museum of Fine Arts.

"We are proud to work with such a diverse collection of partners to imagine and present our public programme.

"Across the season, artists address a range of social issues: from living with AIDS, to racism and taboos surrounding menstruation and fat.

"We hope these artworks bring fresh ideas and perspectives to our audiences and that our building and our programme can be a space for reflection, engagement and debate."

Opening ACCA's season and to coincide with the University of Sussex's Welcome Week, the Empathy Museum"s pop-up shoe shop A Mile in My Shoes will be open for drop-in visitors from Friday 14 – Sunday 23 September.

Visitors are invited to embark on a physical, emotional and imaginative journey and to walk a mile in someone else"s shoes – literally – while listening to their stories on headphones.

BAFTA nominated artist group Blast Theory will bring the UK's first live interactive film event – Bloodyminded - to ACCA (Sunday 14 October), for an ambitious one night only event.

Co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW: WW1 Centenary Art Commissions and Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, this ground breaking film will explore why some of us go to war and others choose not to.

A state-of-the-art cinema screen sits at the centre of ACCA"s auditorium. This season we have invited two special live screenings that explore the relationship between music and film as part of Cine-City (November 2018).

Asian Dub Foundation perform their seminal reinterpretation of the score for La Haine (1995); a film stretching 24 hours in a Parisian suburb in the mid 1990s. Icelandic band amiina (previously the string section for Sigur Rós) present the UK premiere of their live score for Fantômas, a silent masterpiece from 1913.

A further cinematic collaboration with Eyes Wide Open ends the Autumn Season; marking World AIDS day with a screening of Buddies(1985).

ACCA will collaborate withThe Marlborough Theatre, to present two evenings within the Queer Heroesstrand of their 2018 programme.

A new instalment of the Thinking Queer series will take place in the café bar at ACCA (Wednesday 7 November), this time focused on writer, feminist and civil rights activist Audre Lorde. Rachael Young"s explosive new performance Nightclubbing - channelling Grace Jones and embracing Afrofuturism – will take place on Thursday 8 November.

In this performance, created by Marisa Carnesky and collaborators, "issues around fertility, miscarriage, trans identities, lost ancient herstories and what it means to be "female",are scrutinised, politicised and reclaimed".

Later, Scottee brings Fat Blokes to ACCA (Wednesday 14 November), a "sort of dance show about abs, double chins and getting your kit off in public", made in collaboration with choreographer Lea Anderson. ACCA also welcomes Clod Ensemble back to the venue with Placebo (Tuesday 16 – Wednesday 17 October), a brand new work probing the power of the mind in medicinal healing.

Quarantine's Wallflower (23-24 November) rounds off the autumn performance and dance season, with a show where four performers try to remember every dance they've ever danced.

The performances in Brighton are part of a UK-wide tour and in each place the company visits, local people will be encouraged to share their memories of dancing, creating portraits of people remembering dances across the UK.

Working in collaboration with the University of Sussex is an important part of ACCA's public programme, and they will host a public event to mark university's inaugural Stuart Hall Foundation Fellowship in the School of Media, Film and Music.

The fellow, Ingrid Pollard, is an internationally acclaimed photographer.

Ingrid will be in conversation with Lubaina Himid (Turner Prize winning artist, curator and Professor at the University of Central Lancaster), and Professor Catherine Hall (historian, trustee of the Stuart Hall Foundation and Emerita Chair, Centre for the Study of British Slave-ownership at University College London) on Tuesday 6 November.

Dr Augusto Corrieri (Drama, Theatre & Performance, University of Sussex), will give a performative lecture about "what happens inside theatres when nothing is happening", to celebrate the paperback publication of his book of the same title by Bloomsbury (Thursday 27 September).

ACCA also continues to mark the 50 year anniversary since 1968, this time in collaboration with Professor Martin Evans (History, University of Sussex), who brings Reggae at 50 to ACCA – a screening of Horace Ové's Reggae (1971) followed by an afternoon of sound system music and a roundtable discussion (Sunday 11 November).

ACCA is also committed to accessibility for a wide range of audiences and has recently achieved a Silver Attitude is Everything status, in recognition of our on-going work to make our building and programming more accessible. This season includes several captioned performances and events that are highly visual.

Many events in ACCA's programme have an allocation of Pay What You Decide tickets available. These can be reserved for free with an option to donate afterwards.

Brighton-based musician, promoter and studio owner, Stuart Avis, recently sat down with Steve Hackett, who, as one fifth of Genesis during their 1970's prime prog phase, has gone on to build himself a reputation as one of rock's leading and most innovative guitarists.

The Ballad of Johnny Longstaff is the story of one man's adventure from begging on the streets in the north of England to fighting against fascism in the Spanish Civil War, taking in the Hunger Marches and the Battle of Cable Street.

In 1978, after having sold millions of records and become one of the biggest international artists of the 1970s, Cat Stevens decided to step out of the rock star spotlight and walk away. That year, he was to release his final album under that name.

Creators of stage showWild, Laura Mugridge and Katie Villa, want us to think about that thing we have all been through, but very few of us talk about, through a bold, riotous and strikingly visual show.

Brooklyn-based band Air Waves' new album, Warrior, is about being a Warrior in a queer body in this political climate, lead-singer Nicole Schneit's mother being a Warrior fighting chemotherapy, and being a Warrior in relationships.

Written just a year apart, Lone Star in 1979, Laundry & Bourbon in 1980, the plays share the same setting, themes and connected characters and, not surprisingly, are usually presented on the same bill.